CAD

One of the challenges for designers (beginner and advanced) creating objects for 3D printing is finding software capable of doing the complex things we enjoy seeing in 3D printing news and exhibitions. There really doesn’t seem to be one program capable of doing it all, and this has been re-emphasised to me during my recent studies at MIT and a visit to Autodesk. However, there is some good news: if you’re able to quickly learn software, you can find an increasing number of freebies that seem to be specialising in small aspects of the workflow, which you can move between to create complex designs.

This tutorial will show you how I used completely free software to create a complex object during my time in the MIT course “Additive Manufacturing: From 3D Printing to the Factory Floor” as part of a group project, and is actually very quick once you become familiar with the programs. This particular design combines a hollow object with an internal lattice structure suitable for SLA printing on a printer like the Form 2 from Formlabs, which is what was used for the translucent version in the photo above. The white version in the background is a cross-section view of what is going on within the SLA print.

Step 1: The Overall Form

There are loads of free programs to use for creating 3D models – Tinkercad, Sketchup, Openscad, Sculptris, Fusion 360 (if you’re linked to an educational institution)… there are many more and you can certainly use your favourite. For this project, I actually used Onshape for the first time, which runs completely in the cloud (so no software downloading or limitations on computer operating systems/specifications). If you are at a school or university, you can get a free license. It works very similar to Solidworks or other high-end CAD packages, so if you are familiar with sketches and features, you will pick it up very quickly.

Basically, whichever CAD software you use, you want to create the overall shape of your object. In this case, I created an organic tear-drop shape using a “loft,” and cut a section out of the back so that it would clip onto a desk and act as a bag hook (part of the MIT design challenge).

Step 2: Make it Hollow

Many CAD programs will allow you to “shell” your design, making it hollow inside. However, if you can’t find the tool, or aren’t getting good results, we can do this in the next piece of software. But first, export your solid file as a STL (and if you managed to shell it in this step, export a STL of the hollow version as well and skip the rest of this step. You will still need a solid version for the lattice process).

If you weren’t able to hollow out your design previously, click on Edit>Hollow and set your wall thickness. Just like that, your solid object is now hollow, and can be exported as a STL.

A note for SLA printing:

When using the Form 2 3D printer for the first time, I was surprised to learn that the PreForm software doesn’t allow for the user to specify infill patterns in the same way that is commonly done with FDM printing. That is what created the need for this custom lattice infill, and this tutorial. So, being a liquid resin printer, the final important step is to add drainage holes so that the form doesn’t end up completely full of liquid, and errors don’t occur during printing.

Meshmixer again has this function built in. While in the Hollow tool, you will have the option to “Generate Holes” and manipulate their location. This is really important, as you won’t be able to do it again later once your hollow and lattice are combined (unless you’re familiar with the boolean commands in Meshmixer and manually add a cylinder from the Meshmixer menu to use as a cutting tool).

Step 3: Creating a Lattice

Lattices and 3D printing are best friends. But creating a lattice in many CAD programs is close to impossible, usually requiring advanced skills and a computer that can handle very large patterning features. nTopology Element is a free program that will dramatically simplify the process for you – simply load a STL file, choose a lattice pattern, and boom! your object is now a lattice. But let’s go through it a little more slowly.

1. Import your solid STL file into nTopology Element.

2. On the top menu, click Lattice>Generate

3. In the pop-up, you can play with the lattice patterns (called “Rules”), the size of each lattice volume, and click Generate to get a preview. When you’re happy with the result, click on Apply.

4. You will notice that the result has the lattice coming outside of the original object. This is because only whole lattice volumes are used to fill the object, rather than automatically being trimmed to fit. So we must do this manually. In the top Edit menu, click on the Trim tool. A new pop-up will appear, asking you to select the Lattice geometry and the Trim Volume (original model), which you can select from the drop-down menu on the left. Click apply and the lattice will be trimmed to fit perfectly within your original design.

5. At this point, the lattice is made up of vectors – they have no volume. So the next step is to use the Thicken tool on the top menu to provide a diameter to your lattice.

6. Lastly, the thickened lattice needs to be turned into a single mesh that can be 3D printed. The Mesh button (where it says Interchange on the top menu) will join everything together and give you a single mesh. In the drop-down menu on the left, you can now right-click on the mesh, and click on export to get your STL file.

Step 4: Bringing it all Together

The free version of nTopology won’t let you stitch multiple files together, however the Pro version will if you ever end up with the need for a full license. So back to Meshmixer to bring it all together ready for 3D printing.

1. Import the hollow STL and lattice STL into Meshmixer (when you click on import for the second file, use the Append option).

2. You will notice that the ends of the lattice stick out from your object. There are 2 ways to correct this: Option 1 is to use the sculpt tool with the “Flatten” brush to go around and push the ends of the lattice inside of the object boundary – it’s just like pushing clay.

Option 2 is to ever so slightly reduce the scale of your lattice. With the lattice selected in the pop-up Object Browser window (on the right of my window), click on Edit>Transform and you can either manually manipulate the scale, or more accurately type in the reduction in the transform window (with the uniform scaling option ticked). You should only need a small reduction until the lattice fits just inside the outer skin of your object.

3. By turning off the hollow part in the Object Browser, but keeping it selected, you will get an X-Ray view into your object to check if the lattice and hollow part are intersecting. This can help with any final alignment. Remember; you want the lattice touching the solid shell, but not poking through so it’s visible, or loosely floating within the hollow.

4. In the Object Browser, [shift]+click to select both parts at the same time. A new window will appear that will allow you to Boolean Union or Combine both parts together, creating a single object.

5. Export the final STL and you are ready for 3D printing.

Step 5: Getting Creative

Once you get a bit of experience with this process and some of the other tools in Meshmixer, your imagination is the limit! You can really begin to play with different combinations of solid and lattice structures depending on the result you want. Have some fun and feel free to share any of your own creations in the comments section.

– Posted by James Novak

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

Being surrounded by 3D prints and various design projects keeps me creative and inspired, and last year I shared my 3D printed “edditive” logo which features in both my home and work offices. Naturally, when my partner started her own design business called Tropicallday, I had to modify the design for her, and here is the result!

This is a very simple design that anyone could make with the most basic 3D CAD software skill. I created it in Solidworks, however it could easily be created in free software like Tinkercad, with each letter being extruded a slightly different distance, and merged together to form a single object. The final step in this process is to slice the bottom of the text on an angle, so that it tilts towards the viewer – it’s not as obvious in this photo, but you can see what I mean in the edditive print.

A fun little CAD and 3D print project, if you make one yourself, share a photo here on my blog 🙂

– Posted by James Novak

Share this:

Like this:

During November 2017 I was lucky enough to be involved in a 2-day workshop run by Lionel Dean from Future Factories. Lionel has been working with 3D printing for many years, and his work is very inspirational – I’d recommend taking a look at his projects which all use algorithms to generate complex, one-off products often 3D printed in precious metals like gold. The projects really highlight the capabilities of 3D printing and push the boundaries of what is possible.

The workshop focused on using Grasshopper, which runs as a plugin for the 3D modelling software Rhino. If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ve probably seen a few videos and demonstrations as I’ve been learning the program, including my successful Kickstarter earlier this year. The video above is the final simulation produced by the end of the workshop, which was an exploration of mimicking natural growth processes, similar to a sprouting seed. It’s not perfect, but definitely highlights the opportunities of using algorithms to design, as opposed to manually creating a singular static form. In Lionel’s work, he often uses these forms of growth to allow people to essentially pause the simulation and have the particular “frame” 3D printed as a custom object.

For any fellow Grasshopper geeks, above you can get an idea of the code used to generate these sprouts. There is no starting model in Rhino, it is entirely built from this code. Hopefully this will influence some future projects…

– Posted by James Novak

Share this:

Like this:

It’s been quite a few years since I first posted this design on my blog – check out where it all began here. One of the great things about sharing designs like this on file sharing websites like Thingiverse or Pinshape is that you get to see when someone enjoys your design and shares their own photos of the print, or even better, remixes it to add their own unique twist to the idea. Someone even made a video on Youtube which featured this lock 🙂

Occasionally I get requests, either on these websites, through social media, or on this blog, for me to make alterations to a design, or share the native design files for someone to more easily modify. 9 times out of 10 I’m more than happy to help. A few days ago I was contacted through Twitter to make a simple variation to my Beer Bottle Lock, removing the text on top that says “hands off my beer” to provide a blank surface for someone to more easily add their own custom text.

Given that the file is parametric in Solidworks, the alteration only took a few seconds. However rather than email the files direct, it seemed like a good opportunity to share a remix of my own design on Thingiverse, and hopefully benefit even more people. So you can now download this design for free by clicking here, just like the original.

This got me thinking about remixes, and the fact that many of my favourite 3D printing sites like Pinshape and Cults don’t really allow for remixes to be clearly linked to the original source file. I can either upload a print of a design (just photos, not a new STL file), or upload a completely new design. If I want to let people know this new design is a remix, I have to manually write this in the project description, and supply a URL to the original file as you can see on my upload of this new blank version beer bottle lock on Pinshape. On Thingiverse, you can specifically say your design is a remix of another with the click of a button, and a link is created so others can easily go to the original, and see all remixes to find the one most appropriate for them. This is a better system that ties in with the whole Creative Commons (CC) licencing used by all of these websites.

I hope some of these other file sharing websites will take up the challenge to make file attribution and remixing more transparent, it shouldn’t be left up to the user to understand the licensing options and manually enter this information. A common standard across a website, as done by Thingiverse, would really help encourage more sharing, and appropriate attribution to designers.

– Posted by James Novak

Share this:

Like this:

Designing your own 3D printable object can be daunting if you’ve never used a 3D CAD program before. This is a challenge that one of my university classes is facing, with most of the students new to 3D design, but eager to begin experimenting with 3D printing. So this week we explored a workflow that allows them to take their hand-drawn sketches through a couple of simple processes, resulting in a 3D printable file, without having to model in 3D from scratch. So here it is just for you – follow along and let me know how you go.

Step 1: The Sketch

This is the easy part! Find a sketch that you’d like to turn 3D. It’s best if it’s drawn clearly in pen, so if your sketches are in pencil just trace over them on a fresh sheet of paper. For this example I’m borrowing a sketch from online. You must then digitise your sketch – best using a flatbed scanner, or take a photo in good lighting conditions so you get good contrast between your linework and paper.

Step 2: Vectorising

We are going to use Adobe Illustrator to automatically trace the outlines of our sketch. Place your sketch into a new document, and you will see a “Live Trace” or “Image Trace” button appear (depending on your version of Illustrator) near the top menu. You may find that one of the preset options will give you an accurate tracing, or you will need to get into the options and start tweaking the settings. I have an older version of Illustrator, but the settings that work for me are shown above. What you are looking to achieve is a good level of detail, and nice closed lines. Once you have a good result, you can use the “Expand” button to turn the result into individual lines that can be selected. You can also go to the menu and select Object>Ungroup so that your linework is no longer all grouped together as a single item.

Step 3: Exporting

If you have a collection of sketches like this example, you will want to now Save your file (so you can come back to it and make changes later on), and then delete everything from the file that you don’t want to turn 3D. For this example, I have just left the flower tracing that was in the top-right corner. Go to File>Save As and save this drawing as a SVG file. This is a 2D drawing format that will be recognised by our 3D software.

Step 4: Going 3D

For this example we are going to use the freely available 3D software Tinkercad – one of the best features being that it runs from your internet browser, no need to download and install anything. I recommend it as a great place to start your 3D modelling journey, however if you’re already using a more advanced 3D CAD program you can still follow along with this tutorial – the process will be quite similar.

Create a new Tinkercad file, and at the top right of the workspace is the “Import” button – select your SVG file and it will automatically be turned into a 3D object as shown above. Depending on your sketch and requirements, this might be all you need to do and you can jump straight ahead to Step 7: Exporting. However I want to make some modifications to this design now that I have a good starting point in 3D.

Step 5: Modification

For my needs this object is too thick – I only want it to be 2mm tall. In the right panel of objects is a translucent box – this box is like a cutting tool, anywhere it touches my 3D object it can be used to cut away at it. Place a box in the middle of your 3D model, and use the Length and Width sliders to fully enclose your 3D model. Lastly, rotate your model to a side view and you will see an arrow pointing up or down – click-and-drag on this to move the box up 2mm above the workplane.

Now select both the 3D model and the box (either click-and-drag a selection box around the workplane or hold the Shift button and select both objects) and you will notice at the top right the Group icon becomes available. Click on this and Tinkercad will subtract the box from the 3D model, leaving just a 2mm thick object.

Step 6: Patterning

Rather than just printing one of this design, I want to create a more complex pattern. Firstly I need to scale the design down so that it’s a bit smaller. Do this by clicking on the object, holding the Shift button and using the corner handles to click-and-drag the object down in size – mine is about 40x40mm.

With my object selected, at the top left of the window are the standard Copy and Paste actions, as well as the Duplicate option – this is the option I use to make copies. It may copy the object in the exact same position as the original, so when you click Duplicate just click-and-drag this copy out into a new position. Repeat as many times as you like to create a pattern.

When you’re happy with the design, you will need to join all of these individual elements together into a single object. Similar to step 5, select all the objects together and the Group button will become active – however because all of these objects are solids, the Group function will join them together rather than cutting away.

Step 7: Exporting

When your design is complete, use the Export function at the top right of the window to download the object to your computer. The STL option is most likely what you will want for 3D printing. The STL format is the standard file type for all 3D printers.

Step 8: 3D Printing

Finally you can load your STL into your 3D printing or slicing software and 3D print! If the print doesn’t give you the result you want you can either go back to the Tinkercad file and make some more modifications in 3D, or take a step further back to Illustrator and modify the original linework.

The process is not perfect or overly accurate, however for designs like fashion or simple experiments, this can be a good workflow to try if you’re better/faster at drawing by hand than modelling directly in 3D software. If anyone has some different workflows they enjoy using, please feel free to share them in the comments section 🙂

Given the success of the Kickstarter, which is over 300% funded with a few days still to go, I thought it was about time to show the special 3D printed part that has converted the 3D printer into a 2D plotter. I developed the part in Solidworks using just a few key measurements, in particular the 2 front screw holes and the distance needed for the tip of the pen to lightly touch the plate where paper would be stuck. It sure beats using rubber bands and sticky tape which is how the initial experiments began! You can check out the 3D model below.

This is something that you could create for any 3D printer since most extruders have some sort of screw holes that you could take advantage of (for example you can see them in my Cocoon Create printer in this previous post), or perhaps you could design a clever snap-fitting system similar to the tutorial I wrote for Formlabs last year which shows the step-by-step process to designing a snap-fit enclosure. As long as you can create a secure fit, you will be able to get consistent results using your 3D printer as a 2D printer (plotter). If you want to see the process of drawing with this attachment, just check out the Kickstarter video I put together showing the full process of Robot Picasso. It’s a fun way to add a whole new function to your existing 3D printer if you can turn a 2D drawing into simple G-code commands.

– Posted by James Novak

Share this:

Like this:

Once upon a time, when I was a kid, making a Christmas card by hand was a great custom gift to give someone. How very 2D. Now it’s all about 3D printing, with my email full of suggestions for 3D printable gifts and decorations, and special discounts from the big 3D print companies like i.Materialise and Shapeways. So I had to do my own spin on the 3D printed gift, but rather than just show you the result, I’m going to walk you through step-by-step how you can download a design from your favourite file-sharing website, and customize it in 5 easy steps. Great if you’re short on time to design something from scratch, or if you’ve found something that already does exactly what you want and just want to add a little bit extra.

Step 1: Meshmixer Import

OK I’m assuming you’ve found a design you like on a website like Thingiverse, Pinshape, 3D File Market or Cults (they’re the ones I use anyway). For this example I’m using the Harley Davidson logo I found on Thingiverse, which is a great design since the designer RenatoT has already provided blank options without text, so it’s all set up to go. If you’ve got a design and you need to remove some details, either some text or a part of the design that you don’t need, check out a tutorial I wrote for my friends at Pinshape which explains how to remove features from a downloaded design.

For both requirements I highly recommend using Meshmixer, a free program from Autodesk which is very easy to use, and perfect for manipulating STL files. There are other programs out there (like MeshLab which I’ve written about previously), however Meshmixer is by far the best in my opinion, I use it regularly. When you have your file, just import it into Meshmixer.

Step 2: Design Your Addition

There are many ways you can create your addition – in fact you can use the tools within Meshmixer to edit the design and add basic forms including text. However I find them a little bit clunky to use, so I prefer to design my addition inside a proper 3D CAD program like Solidworks, or you can do the same in free software like 123D Design or Tinkercad, or whatever you have access to really.

The main thing is to get some basic measurements for where your text is going in Meshmixer first, which you can access from the Analysis>Measure menu and use the Point-to-Point option to measure the size of the face you wish to apply text onto. Turning on the Snap to Edges option helps, and in my experience you may need to try a few different options to get the measurement you’re looking for. For this Harley logo, the length I had to work with was 63mm, so I created a box in Solidworks to help visualise this. You can re-scale your design in Meshmixer later, but it really helps to just get it right from the beginning. Type in the text, adjust the dimensions to fit your bounding box, and extrude. Then export this file as a STL since this is the format used to import back into Meshmixer.

Step 3: Bringing It All Together

With your original file open in Meshmixer, you can now import the text into the same file. Make sure you select the Append option in the pop-up window so that both models will be in the same workspace. You will now have a new Object Browser window available to select between both files, shown on the right in the image above.

Obviously we now want to rotate and move the text into position. This is easily done from the Edit>Transform menu. Use the arrows to move the text, and the arcs to rotate it into position. As you get closer and closer, keep zooming in until you can push the text just inside of your chosen surface – if there are any gaps the 2 models won’t properly merge together and may have errors when it comes to 3D printing. If your imported text is too large or small, the little boxes at the ends of the arrows can be used to scale it as required. Click Accept when complete.

Step 4: Combine Into a Single Part

Just because your 2 models are intersecting on screen doesn’t mean they are actually joined together yet. If you look at the Object Browser window you will still see both models are separate. There are a couple of options to join them together in Meshmixer, and the options will pop up when you select both models together in the Object Browser (using shift-click) and then the Edit menu. We will use Combine, which will merge them into a single file as you can see in the Object Browser in the above image. For many 3D printers and software this is enough and you can export this now as a STL and get 3D printing (that’s all I did to print this design). However when you’re sharing files online it’s important to make sure your files are in the very best condition so everyone can 3D print them no matter what printer or software they’re using. And it only takes a few extra clicks to get this right. If you want to learn how just keep reading the next paragraph, however most of you will probably want to skip this detail for now as it’s a little more advanced and may not make sense.

OPTIONAL (Advanced): We can use Edit>Make Solid to properly merge the pieces together and also control the resolution of the mesh. The default settings may shock you when the preview is generated with a lot of your crisp edges becoming soft and low resolution. By increasing the sliders for Solid Accuracy and Mesh Density you can increase the resolution. Just click the Update button to refresh the preview model. When you’re happy with the detail you can Accept the model – just keep in mind the higher your resolution, the larger the final STL file size! In the Object Browser you will also note that the original model (before using Make Solid) is still available, just hidden from view so you can always go back to this one if you want to change the detail by clicking on the eye symbol.

Step 5: Export and Prepare for 3D Printing

Finally you are ready to use the Export function from the File menu. Make sure you check that the file type is a STL Binary Format, not STL ASCII Format which typically results in a much larger file size. This is the file to 3D print with, which you can see loaded into Cura above. You might also like to save in the native Meshmixer format (.mix) in case you want to come back and keep working on this file later – remember STL files are very dumb meshes so if you open your exported STL, you won’t have the same options to keep working on it.

That’s it, customizing your 3D print in only 5 simple steps with free software. With only days before Christmas, there’s still plenty of time to get printing!

– Posted by James Novak

Share this:

Like this:

It’s been a busy month for me and 3D printing even though it’s meant to be the mid year break from uni! Above are some photos from a full day 3D printing workshop I ran for a local high school in our new 3D printing lab, with a handful of students all being exposed to CAD, 3D printing and 3D scanning for the first time. By the end of the first session each of them had their first small design 3D printing over the lunch break, which just shows how quickly young kids are able to pick up this technology. We were also able to demonstrate for the very first time one of our brand new chocolate 3D printers, the Choc Edge. Yes that’s right, a chocolate 3D printer! I’m sure it won’t be long before everyone has something like this on their kitchen bench, but for now if you want to see how they work, come along to our Gold Coast campus open day on July 24th where we will have 3 in action for your sugary delight!

Last night I was really privileged to be a speaker at an event called DRIVEinnovation, hosted by the Brisbane West Chamber of Commerce. As the name suggests, the discussion was all around innovation, and how businesses can better adopt new technologies and keep up with the rapid changes across all industries. I was part of a panel with Ty Curtis from local augmented reality company Activate Entertainment, and Sam Forbes from cloud services company 6YS. The questions were certainly challenging in the short time-frame (how do you even begin to describe how to innovate in just a few short minutes?), but it’s really great to see such an active council asking these questions and building a community of very talented people. There were even some virtual reality and augmented reality demonstrations (that’s me in the right photo looking at a human skeleton with augmented reality). If you’re in the local area, it’s definitely worth following the Chamber through email or social media as these events happen every few months.

Coming up next week, and running over 2 weeks, are some intensive workshops at Griffith University for teachers. The workshops run in 2-day blocks, costing $180 (which also allows you to bring a student for free), and are on the following topics:

InDesign (beginner and advanced)

Photoshop (beginner and advanced)

3D Animation (beginner and advanced)

Games Design (beginner and advanced)

Hand Lettering

3D Design

3D Printing (beginner and advanced)

Design Modeling Techniques

I will of course be running the 3D printing workshops, and there will be 2 levels of workshops each week: Workshop 1 is for beginners to CAD and 3D printing, where people will get to build a functioning product assembly. Workshop 2 is for more intermediate users who have some experience with CAD and 3D printing, and we will be combining this knowledge with 3D scanning to create wearable devices. If you’re interested, get in touch and I’ll pass on details to the administrator organising the event.

– Posted by James Novak

Share this:

Like this:

As my brain still tries to process everything from the 2016 Inside 3D Printing Conference Sydney, I thought a bit of a review might be a good way to try and both sort out my thoughts, and share with you some of the things on show and discussed throughout the 2 day conference. This conference was shared with National Manufacturing Week, which actually makes up the bulk of the exhibitor stands in the image above – 3D printing only filled up the very right thoroughfare from the Fuji Xerox sign to the back (yes there’s a bit of a disappointed tone in my voice here).

Above you can see the size of the 3D printing conference itself – which I have to admit was a real shock to see when I walked in on day 1 expecting at least 100 people or more. Having been to RAPID last year in Los Angeles (you can read about my experience here) I guess I just expected a lot more interest in 3D printing by now in Australia! Our slow uptake despite having a significant share of the worlds titanium, which could be used right here for 3D printing, was certainly a common theme for discussion from many speakers, as were the trends and predictions for continued worldwide growth after the latest Wohlers Report for 2016. But well done to all the Queenslanders who made the trip down, I couldn’t believe how often I would speak to someone only to find out they were from my part of the world! Perhaps Inside 3D Printing should look at running in Brisbane next time?

The good news is there were some really great speakers, one of my favourites being from keynote Paul D’Urso about his pioneering use of 3D printing in surgery over the last 20 years. What I liked most was his candid insight into the tensions between what surgeons and their patients want (for example custom-fitting implants that heal quickly and are comfortable, custom tools and guides for surgeons to provide more accurate surgery, and 3D prints from CT scans for pre-surgical analysis and practice which saves time in the operating theater) as opposed to regulatory bodies like the FDA in the United States who are getting in the way of innovations like 3D printing and basically enabling large corporations to own the monopoly on expensive standardised medical equipment. He has a great proactive attitude of just getting in and improving implants and tools himself using 3D printing, and has founded Anatomics as a way to reach out to other surgeons with the tools and products he and his team have developed. A great “just do it” message which was really motivating.

Education was also a big theme, with speakers like Ben Roberts from Modfab and Stuart Grover from 3D Printing Studios sharing their experiences around educating children and the general public about 3D printing through various training programs and initiatives here in Australia. However it seems that there is still far too little being done to educate people about 3D printing, and indeed many other emerging technologies, and perhaps the low attendance at this conference is evidence of how far we have yet to go when compared with the same Inside 3D Printing conferences around the world which seem to generate very high numbers of attendance. A re-work of high school curriculum’s was a well received solution at the conference, with traditional wood-work and metal-work style classes needing to be reinvigorated with digital technologies to provide appropriate high-value skills to students due to the rapidly changing nature of jobs, with reports suggesting that by the year 2020 5 million jobs will be made redundant due to robotics and automation. One of the hurdles argued by Ben Roberts was that most teachers either don’t have the skills to teach CAD and 3D printing, or learned them 5 or more years ago and are now outdated. As someone very keen to help enable the next generation of designers through my regular training programs and visits to schools, along with being a part of the Advance Queensland scheme, I think this is an extremely important issue to tackle right now. Anyway, on to some of the fun things.

Just like with RAPID, perhaps my favourite part of these conferences is the exhibition space – you never know what you’re going to see! Above on the left is the 3D printed jet engine from Monash University, Deakin University and Lab 22 (part of the CSIRO) which you may have seen in the media already. A lot of complexity with multiple 3D printing methods and materials used for the various parts, I just wish it was a working model! In the middle is a full-colour 3D printed hand, almost exactly the same size as mine. What’s unique about this print is that not only was it printed in 1 go, but that the outer “skin” material is soft and squishy like skin! This is a brand new printer from Fuji Xerox capable of printing with 5 material cartridges at once, and there is huge potential for this to create simulation models for training surgeons, or realistic copies of organs or tumors for surgeons to actually practice on prior to cutting open their patient. Lastly was a highly detailed SLS print of feathers as a fabric-like material at the 3D Printing Systems stand – just something a little more unusual compared to all the usual prints everyone normally displays.

Lastly just a few things that caught my eye throughout the other exhibits – on the left is one of the robotics displays for automating tasks like pick ‘n’ place – I think I could have a lot of fun with one of these next to my desk! In the middle was perhaps the most interesting display from my own research perspective, with CAD company PTC Creo beginning to enable Internet of Things devices to integrate into their software through the ThingWorx platform. Very much in line with my experiments using Rhino with the Grasshopper and Firefly plugins, however the addition of augmented reality is a really great touch – if you want to see a demo of their full system in action, check out their short 3 minute demo video of the bike being used in both the physical and virtual world. Lastly there were a few companies showing their CNC routers and laser cutters, some of them desktop in size – I just wish I could line them all up next to my 3D printer at home!

Overall a lot to soak up and plenty of new networks created with other attendees, I just hope next year there is an even bigger audience at the conference and even more amazing things happening.

– Posted by James Novak

Share this:

Like this:

I just wanted to quickly put the word out about the Inside 3D Printing Conference & Expo happening in a couple of weeks in Sydney. Keynote speakers are Ian Gibson, Head of School at Deakin University, Fred Fischer from Stratasys, and neurosurgeon Paul D’Urso from Epworth Hospital. I’m also excited to be speaking at the conference on a topic called Gamification of CAD: Engaging Consumers Into The Design of 3D Printable Products which will show some of the developments around turning the 3D modeling process into more interactive and game-like experiences that anyone can pick up and understand. I will also be using some examples from my own work which I’ve previously posted here, including the Wiiduino which uses Wii nunchuck controllers to customise a 3D model in Rhino. Should be a lot of fun if the demo works! Come along and say hi 🙂

But as always with these events, I’m most excited to wander the exhibit hall and speak with people about materials, printers and all things nerdy! My last experience at RAPID was just awesome, so much to learn and so many people doing interesting things.

If you’re interested in attending I have a discount code for the 2 day pass, just use the code SPEAKER40 to get 40% off your ticket! You can thank me later. Hope to see you there.